Theatre review: Musical Once is Bill Millerd's exquisite swan-song

For his swan song after nearly half a century leading the theatre company he’s built into a powerhouse, the Arts Club’s Bill Millerd directs a musical rooted in a culture from the other side of the Atlantic and gives it his signature Vancouver twist.

Once, by Irishman Enda Walsh with music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, perfectly bookends the 1972 production of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, starring locals Ann Mortifee and Leon Bibb, that launched Millerd’s career and the Arts Club’s success.

Adapted from the movie of the same title, Once charts a Dublin romance between an Irish man and a Czech woman, called only Guy and Girl. The show is bittersweet, rousing and melancholy by turns, and Millerd’s production is a triumph.

Backing splendid leadsAdrian Glynn McMorran and Gili Roskies, a ridiculously talented homegrown cast of 10 sing, dance and play more than a dozen different instruments. Musical director Steven Charles knits things together with delicious arrangements, harmonies and orchestration.

When the raucous pre-show party on Ted Roberts’ woody pub set with its prominent Guinness signs quiets down, the singer-songwriter Guy presents his first haunting ballad. Accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, McMorran howls in exquisite romantic despair about the girlfriend who left him for New York.

The Girl hears and encourages him. After a quirky pick-up scene (she conjures a broken vacuum when he tells her he repairs Hoovers), they duet, Roskies on piano, with the lovely Oscar-winning song, Falling Slowly. And fall they do, sharing their love for music and their heartbreak. Turns out she’s been left, too.

She meets his widowed Da (John Murphy). He meets her mother (Alison Jenkins), daughter and expatriate Czech flatmates who are learning English by watching TV soaps. (Emigration is a fascinating sub-theme of the play.) Their wild Czech folk song-and-dance, with lively choreography by Scott Augustine, features comic Svec (Alexander Nicoll) and sexy, dynamic Réza (Marlene Ginander).

The Czechs along with music shop owner Billy (Chris Cochrane) and a musical bank manager (Catriona Murphy) make up the motley crew accompanying the Guy and Girl when they record a demo of his songs. Superb musicianship goes side by side with a lot of very funny stuff in the rehearsal and recording scenes.

Showcasing his vocal and musical talent, McMorran is quietly sensational at the centre of it all. Roskies provides a strong, aching counterpoint, and when the full ensemble is playing and harmonizing, the effect is thrilling.

Once tells a simple story, almost a fairy tale, through a combination of beautiful balladry, clever irony and sharp cultural consciousness. Listen to the Guy sing Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy and to the Girl cite Yeats, Joyce and Van Morrison to convince the bank manager to support her own Irish culture.

Despite its origin as a movie, Once feels to me like a love letter to musical theatre: live performers telling a moving story through music and song to a live audience sharing the room. It’s the kind of rich experience Bill Millerd has spent his career creating for us.

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